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Breast-shaped hill


A breast-shaped hill is a mountain in the shape of a human breast. Some such hills are named "", a word for the breast or nipple. Such anthropomorphic geographic features are to be found in different places of the world and in some cultures they were revered as the attributes of the Mother Goddess, such as the Paps of Anu, named after Anu, an important female deity of pre-Christian Ireland.

The name Mamucium that gave origin to the name of the city of Manchester is thought to derive from the Celtic language meaning "breast-shaped hill", referring to the sandstone bluff on which the fort stood; this later evolved into the name Manchester.

Mostly breast-shaped hills are connected with local ancestral veneration of the breast as a symbol of fertility and well-being. It is not uncommon for very old archaeological sites to be located in or below such hills, as on Samson, Isles of Scilly, where there are large ancient burial grounds both on the North Hill and South Hill, or Burrén and Burrena, Aragon, Spain, where two Iron Age Urnfield culture archaeological sites lie beneath the hills.

Also the myths surrounding these mountains are ancient and enduring and some have been recorded in the oral literature or written texts; for example, in an unspecified location in Asia, there was a mountain known as "Breast Mountain" with a cave in which the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma (Da Mo) spent a long time in meditation.


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